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Joe Soucheray: Cossetta sees what taking a $2 million gift can cost you

By Joe Soucheray

Posted:
05/15/2012 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
12/19/2012 12:18:58 PM CST

The three lavel expansion of Cossetta Italian Market and Pizzeria could be mostly done by August. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

There's at least three or four main stories that flow from the expansion of Cossetta, the restaurant on St. Paul's West Seventh Street where Dave Cossetta is spending $10.5 million to grow the establishment right up to and including being able to sit on the roof. If there's anything we like better than sitting outside, it's sitting outside on a roof.

Some of that money is city money, a story in and of itself, but possibly more intriguing is what Cossetta is supposed to do with storm water. Apparently, because he is acting in concert with the city because he acquired a "forgivable" $2 million loan backed by federal Build America Bonds, he is obligated to follow the city's "sustainable building'' policies. Those policies include stricter storm water management for projects funded by the city, whose site plans were created after July 2010.

Well, when you get in bed with the city, you certainly do open yourself up to the various experiments and machinations and hoops to jump through that seem to get dreamed up in the interest of protecting our Mother, the Earth.

Cossetta, you got some of our money so here's what you have to do: Rather than let rain fall and run and do whatever rain does and has been doing since the beginning of time, city staff and the Board of Zoning Appeals and the Department of Safety and Inspections -- the bouncing ball of regulations bounces wildly -- are telling Cossetta that he has to build what is tantamount to a septic system, that he has to capture rainwater in a tank.

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That way, apparently, the rain will flow out of the tank when it is full, and not all at once, the way it does now when it rains.

Cossetta points out that building a tank in the bedrock beneath his building exposes his basement to the possibility of water getting into his basement, and thus his food-storage area. There are cracks in the bedrock down there and a host of other problems, not the least of which is the additional cost of building such a system.

Cossetta went to the Board of Zoning Appeals on Monday, May 14. That is always an essentially unpleasant experience, as you must appear with your hat in your hand and look sheepish. Cossetta's attorney argued that the expansion is not creating any additional burdens insofar as rain is concerned and could we please have a variance to just let the storm water flow into the streets as it does now.

The Board of Zoning Appeals voted 4-2 to deny him the variance. Cossetta said he would appeal that denial to the city council within 10 days.

Well, it was the city council, principally Dave Thune, that has been championing Cossetta's expansion.

I called Thune and, although he did not say so directly, he seemed to agree that it is entirely plausible that Cossetta faces a greater problem by having to build a retention system than the city faces by letting the rain water do what it will.

"It's all about the rate of runoff," Thune said, sounding exasperated.

Yes, well, if he is exasperated, I can't imagine that he has much of a leg to stand on. These Alice in Wonderland rules do not get written in a vacuum. Somebody thought it was a good idea that if city money is involved, then the city gets to call the rate of rain water flowage, even if it doesn't make sense.

Doesn't make sense?

For example, Cossetta was told at the variance hearing that maybe he could offset his presumed addition to the storm water flow by making a parkland donation or building a rain garden in a residential lot he owns in the neighborhood.

In other words, slip us a little plenary indulgence. Kind of like carbon trading. You can sin, but you have to pay us for it. These schemes are invented to ostensibly save the environment but they have nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with assembling more power in the hands of the central office.